Past Pages Jan. 8

130 YEARS AGO

Birth date: Fred Douglass was asked how old he was - and he replied: "That is what I want to know. When I was born men of my color were not born on the days of the week, or weeks of the month, or months of the year, but in corn-planting, in huckleberry time, conveniently as they might be."

120 YEARS AGO

Vonderhyde's Meteorite: It fell from a cloudless sky and made a nice round hole in the back window of the harness shop. When picked up, it was quite warm. Lindsay, the marble cutter, heard it strike. Now Lindsay claims to be a geologist of the first order. He grabbed the fragment about the size and shape of a lima bean and subjected it to severe chemical tests, returned and said: "That sir is meteorite and you hang onto it, it's a duzy, and weighs half an ounce."

70 YEARS AGO

John Nulty: Manager of the Carson Theater will show a feature, "Sagebrush and Silver," a short on Carson City, Virginia City, Silver City, Reno, Hawthorne, Las Vegas and Boulder Dam ... a newsreel tour photographed in Nevada's natural color.

30 YEARS AGO

TV shows: Wild Kingdom, CHIPS, The Jeffersons, Alice.

10 YEARS AGO

Governor Guinn and Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa are preparing a package of legislation that would make Nevada law the same as new federal anti-terrorism laws.

• Sue Ballew is the daughter of Bill Dolan, who wrote this column for the Nevada Appeal from 1947 until his death in 2006.